Scott Lancaster on Sports

Why the development of our country’s young athletes
continues to erode?

Are you watching the NCAA Basketball Tournament? If you’re any type of sports fan this is the weekend you should cherish. Excitement packaged in upsets, buzzer beaters, and overtimes. It may be the best sports weekend of the year. But there’s one problem, it’s not good basketball.

I’ve listened and agree with many of the experts and sports talk radio show hosts that complain the talent in college basketball is down this year and has been so for as long as 15 years. ESPN’s Jay Bilas, & radio host of “The Herd”, Colin Cowherd, have voiced this opinion throughout the entire basketball season. Cowherd today on his show best described the NCAA Tournament when he warned listeners “Don’t confuse exciting with good.” He’s absolutely right. I can go to a youth basketball game, and watch an exciting game, despite the fact they cannot dribble, shoot, pass, and take three to four steps every time they touch the ball. Exciting by the way, can be the final few seconds of a 12-10 boys or girls barnburner.

It’s not March Madness; it’s just plain and simply maddening. This weekend, on sport’s largest stages, we are witnessing the results of poor youth coaching, with a rush and overemphasis on playing games rather than teaching the sport and developing the athlete and their fundamental skills first. I’ve discussed this with dozens of college and high school coaches nationwide, including Villanova Head Basketball Coach, Jay Wright on my Sirius/XM National Radio Show – “The ABC’s of Sports”,. They all agree; young players are no longer sufficiently trained in the fundamentals of dribbling and passing. We have an obsession in this country to start kids playing at earlier and earlier ages without ever properly spending the time and emphasizing skill development.

The largest culprit of this talent erosion in basketball is the AAU. Just as we approach the time of year when high school and youth basketball programs finish their seasons, immediately begins AAU basketball tournament play, The AAU provides little in the way of training and a lot in the way of numerous (weekend after weekend) games.

If college coaches want to see the quality of talent improve, and sports fans want to experience the best playing the best this time of year there several simple things we can all do to improve the next generation of basketball talent.

1. College coaches should encourage more high school programs, with their assistance, to conduct skill development camps throughout the summer de-emphasizing tournament play.
2. College coaches should strongly recommend that high school programs reach down to the youth grass root levels with their players to provide more hands-on fundamental skill training.
3. Parents can do their part by resisting the urge to register their kids in consecutive seasons of play, and instead place them in skill development programs (camps, clinics, etc.) that improve their fundamentals while encouraging kids to get their game fix by playing pick-up in their driveways & local playgrounds.

Otherwise, the product that we all cherish, on a weekend such as this, will eventually erode into a memory.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 19th, 2010 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.